In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 3/52

I didn't think I'd read so much this week.  I thought I'd only finished one or two books!

Fire & Hemlock is one I first read years ago.  It's a little longer than most of Diana Wynne Jones' books, and a little bit harder to follow. In fact, the ending is a lot more satisfying and makes more sense once you have someone else talk you through it.  Or it was for me, anyway.

I've also read The High Lord before.  I do enjoy the series, but this one I listened to as an audiobook.  I started it months ago, then started listening to Firestarter and found it a bit tricky to get back in to.  On the bright side, I found that it only takes about a minute to get used to listening to audiobooks at 3x speed, which got me through it a lot faster!  It's not that I wanted it to be over - it's that I consume books like popcorn.


Songwriting for Dummies was new to me.  I bought myself a keyboard for my birthday, and it's quite fun making up songs.  I found some of the book useful, but, to be honest, I prefer this Songwriting course on coursera.  It's run by Pat Pattison of Berklee, and his lectures are absolutely fascinating.

One thing the book goes into that Pat doesn't is selling your songs, but I mostly skimmed those chapters since it's not the area I'm particularly interested in right now.

Finally, I don't even know why I had a copy of How Not to Be a Perfect Mother.  It's an informal parenting guide covering the ages 0-3.  I have no children.  I have a mirena which is not due to be removed until next March, and which will likely be replaced with another one at that time.  I have no close friends or relatives with small children whom I am expected to know things about.  In short, the subject matter of this book has no relevance to my life.  Especially not because Purves is almost offensively middleclass and was a complete idiot over the MMR issue.  Paraphrased; there is no evidence whatsoever linking MMR to autism.  "Yes, but lots of parents still feel that there is, and feelings are just as important as evidence and truth!".  Sigh.

In Which We Discuss Reading for Book Clubs

You may recall, I attended a bookclub several years ago.  They were reading Frankenstein, which I'd been meaning to get to for years.  It was an okay evening, but the next few books were things I'd never felt any interest in, so I stopped going.

I've often felt resentful over being forced to read things I'm not interested in.  I think this stems from being forced to read specific books at school.  We'd always read as a group, and it was so slow.  If I'd been allowed to read myself, it would have taken half the time.  But, no, I had to listen to some eejit stammering over words and taking ages to come out with the simplest things.  So frustrating.  So I think I probably had a similar issue with bookclubs suggesting I read things I didn't want to.

My feminist group started a bookclub about a year ago.  At first, my attendance was patchy - couldn't always afford the book, couldn't always get time off to go, sometimes just completely forgot.  Now I'm working the first problem's solved, and I've booked those days off as holiday for the rest of the year.  I get most of then back as my natural rest days anyway.

It helps that it's a small group, and it's amongst people I know and it also helps that it covers a topic I like, so I find reading the books quite interesting and rewarding.

I've started going to another bookclub since then.  A coworker recommended John Scalzi's Red Shirts to me, and when looking at MeetUp a little while later, I noticed a local group was planning to read it.  I enjoyed that meeting, and went to the next one, since it was sci-fi themed and I was free.  Also, because the book had happened to be sitting on my unread shelf for a few years.  Again, it's a small group of people that I like, and the books are things that I'm interested in.  Since we're all fairly fast readers, they've started a midweek book group, as well as the general one, which I've also been going to.  So that's three!

This month, I've actually chosen two of the books.  Sheri Tepper's Plague of Angels, and Colette Dowling's Myth of the Money Tree, both books I've read and enjoyed previously.  I'm quite looking forward to discussing both of them!

I've also been rereading The Dice Man, which I haven't read in a good five years.  I'm still listening to Firestarter on audiobook, though I stopped for a bit.  Making it a daily habit on HabitRPG has really helped me get back into it.  I'm also listening to The High Lord intermittently.